5 Inventions You Didn’ t Know Were from Southeast Asia
WORDS BY ANTONINA JOSON
You may know that Pad Thai, tuktuks, and merlions come from Southeast Asia— but did you know that the ATM hails from there too? Every day we use items without knowing of their origins. In this article, we’ ll delve into a few inventions from Southeast Asia, how they came to be, and which country they’ re from!
Biometric Passport / ePassport- Malaysia
The first item on our list is an international necessity. We may not have had biometric passports for as long as the other items, but it’ s made travelling much easier in the last years. Thanks to a Malaysian technology firm called IRIS Corporation, passports have been made more convenient with nearly every country using this technology.
The passports contain a microprocessor chip that houses the passport holder’ s biometric information. Similar to smart card technology, this chip, along with an antenna, allows authorities to verify the holder’ s information. Machines read the data page of the passport which is embedded with the chip and its readable lines. A safety feature called Public Key Infrastructure or PKI makes it inconvenient and expensive
Malaysia was the first country to issue biometric passports way back in 1998. 10 years later, around 60 countries were also using biometric passports. As of June 2025, nearly all nations around the world require passports to be biometric.
ATM- Vietnam
In the 1990s, Vietnam-born Do Duc Cuong introduced the world to the automatic teller machine( ATM) that we know today. With a repertoire of banking and finance jobs behind him, Do Duc Cuong also took the time to develop technology. After pursuing a degree and working
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